photo by: Criminal Justice Coordinating Council screenshot

During the Criminal Justice Coordinating Council's monthly meeting Tuesday, Lawrence Police Chief Rich Lockhart told the group that Douglas County's law enforcement leaders plan to continue gathering data during traffic and pedestrian stops.

Law enforcement agencies are planning to keep collecting data from traffic stops in Douglas County, and they also would like to gather more information about probable cause and where drivers come from, Lawrence Police Chief Rich Lockhart said this past week.

The data collection stemmed from a study commissioned by the Douglas County Criminal Justice Coordinating Council in 2019, which wrapped up earlier this year. The study found, among other things, that Black drivers were nearly three times as likely as white drivers to be pulled over for a traffic stop in Douglas County, and drivers of color were nearly twice as likely to be searched.

The study culminated in a community meeting in August where area law enforcement agencies fielded questions from the public, and they all said at the time that they planned to continue collecting traffic stop data.

During the CJCC’s monthly meeting on Tuesday, Lockhart said the county’s police chiefs, Douglas County Sheriff Jay Armbrister and criminal justice coordinator Katy Fitzgerald had indeed been discussing how they would continue to collect that data. Lockhart said the group had been looking for ways to capture “more meaningful data” in the months since then, and they’ve come up with some suggestions they think will improve data collection moving forward.

Potentially the biggest change, Fitzgerald said, is based on the probable cause reasons for a search being initiated. Across the state line in Missouri, law enforcement officers have been required by state statute to collect and report traffic stop data since 2000, and the probable cause for a stop is one point on the list.

“That was one data point we weren’t really able to (gather),” Fitzgerald said during Tuesday’s meeting. “I think a lot of the discussions that we had in the community meeting that we held (in August), in discussing that, it was a lot of, I think, anecdotes or guesses around why searches were initiated, what was the probable cause. The Missouri form really gives officers an opportunity to really detail what was the probable cause for a search.”

Fitzgerald said that could include reasons like contraband in plain view, the odor of alcohol, or other items that were in sight when an officer made contact with a driver.

Another suggestion was to collect more information about drivers’ demographics, including where their vehicles were registered and the legal address listed on their driver’s licenses. Lockhart said that could be as simple as keeping track of a driver’s ZIP code of residence and checking whether it matches with the jurisdiction the driver is stopped in.

“… We can get an idea of how many of these stops relate to a transient population,” Lockhart said. “For example, I’ve got a lot of college students, my guess is I’m going to have a pretty high transient population, as well as (University of Kansas Police Chief Nelson Mosley). (Eudora Police Chief Wes Lovett), who has K-10, is probably going to have more transients, as well, whereas (Baldwin City Police Chief Mike Patrick) may not have as many because he doesn’t have as big of highways going through. Those are important for us as we make policy decisions based on the data that we collect in the traffic stops.”

Fitzgerald agreed that adding those elements to the ongoing data collection would give Douglas County’s law enforcement agencies the opportunity to provide more meaningful data around those interactions, rather than potentially feeling like they’re just “taking guesses” at why a search was initiated during a stop.

Lockhart added that officers could also gather more detail in the case of investigative stops — contacts where an officer has reasonable suspicion that the person is committing, or is about to commit, a crime.

But Lockhart said there’s one type of data that law enforcement leaders think they’ll stop collecting as frequently — demographic data from passengers other than the driver, which is currently collected during traffic violation stops like running a red stoplight. He said leaders felt that practice was intrusive to people who aren’t directly involved in a stop, and it would prevent those stops from going on longer than necessary. Lockhart said that information would still be collected from all vehicle passengers during investigative stops, though, or if an officer makes contact with any passenger other than the driver.

Lockhart said the plan is to review the county’s traffic stop data once every six months, in part because the police chiefs in Douglas County’s smaller communities said they worried they wouldn’t have quite enough data to make more worthwhile assessments on a more frequent monthly or quarterly basis.